The President is currently announcing his nomination of Judge John Roberts, now of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court of the United States.
I don’t know a whole lot about Roberts as a judge; he hasn’t been on the D.C. Circuit for that long. But what I hear from people who know him, or know more about him than I do, is that yes, he’s a conservative – but he’s a real conservative, not a radical. I also take some comfort in the fact that the more wingnuttish participants on this thread don’t like him – a "squish," in the words of one commenter.
My guess: an easy confirmation. Some of the interest groups may try to raise a ruckus (he did sign a brief urging that Roe v. Wade be overruled while he worked in the Solicitor General’s office, but that was official policy at the time). But I doubt that the Senate Democrats will see this as a call to battle, and I think they’d be foolish to try to turn it into one. Particularly since any move to filibuster would require getting Dems in the Gang of 14 to consider a Roberts nomination an "extraordinary circumstance," I just don’t think it’s going to happen. There will be the requisite tough questions, but at the end of the day I could easily see Roberts getting 80, 90, even 100 votes to confirm. Realistically, he’s probably the best the Democrats could hope for.
Seems like a run-of-the-mill partisan hack to me. I’m actually surprised, with all the talk of growing the GOP lately, I thought he’d nominate a latino or at least another woman.
Funny…first thing I thought of when I heard his (lack of) time on other courts, was “oh, so there’s not much record to examine” – that scares me a little bit. Bush could know something about him that we don’t.Of course, that’s the cynical, pessimistic side of me, but when dealing with the Bush administration, cynicism is the best policy.My guess is that Roe is probably still not safe.